As in the rest of the country, health insurance rates in Maryland are through the roof, and there is no sign that they will stop going up. It's gotten so bad that almost 17% of all people living in Maryland can no longer pay for health insurance at all.
If your job offers health insurance, you should think about signing up for it. Health insurance for a group is almost always cheaper than health insurance for one person. But if your company doesn't offer health insurance or if you work for yourself, you'll have to find other ways to keep your health insurance costs low.
The lower your monthly premium rate will be, the more you are willing to pay for what are called "co-pays." Co-pays are payments you have to make every time you go to the doctor, the emergency room, a lab, or get almost any other kind of health care. If you raise your co-pay from 25% to 50%, you'll pay for half of each doctor's visit, etc., and your monthly health care premiums should go down by at least 25% to 35%.
If you still can't afford to pay for health care, you may need to change the way you think about health insurance. People have always thought that health insurance would pay for all or most of their yearly health care costs. But what if you started to think about health insurance differently?
What if health insurance didn't help pay for every trip to the doctor? What if, instead, you thought of health insurance as a life preserver that would only save you in the case of a major illness or a sudden disaster?
What if you only think of health insurance as a way to protect your home and other assets in case of a major health crisis that would wipe out everything you've worked your whole life to get in a flash if you didn't have health insurance?
If you start to think about health insurance this way, you might want to buy a low-cost policy with a high deductible. By "high deductible," we mean a policy with a deductible of $2,000 or more.
In a normal year, it's clear that this kind of policy won't help pay for any of your health care costs. You will pay for all of your visits to the doctor's office, the emergency room, routine lab work, and so on. This insurance makes sure that no matter what happens, whether it's an accident or a sudden illness, the most you'll have to pay for your health care is $2,000 or whatever deductible you choose.
In this way, your health insurance protects your savings, your home, and any other assets you have.
But no matter what kind of coverage you choose, you can still get the best prices on health insurance in Maryland if you go online and compare policies and prices at 2 or more sites that are made to make comparisons quick and easy. By taking the extra time to compare prices on at least two different websites, you will have a better chance of finding the absolute best rates on health insurance in Maryland, saving you money every year for many years to come.
